


He Stands in the Midst of Nations

by theherocomplex



Series: Distant Shores and Voices [10]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Templar Carver Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 03:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/pseuds/theherocomplex
Summary: …how will Bethany know him when they see each other again, and he’s an old man and she’s still young, a fixed point in time getting ever-farther away?A character study of Ser Carver Hawke, knight-lieutenant of the Templar Order.





	He Stands in the Midst of Nations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thievinghippo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thievinghippo/gifts).



> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA73oyWm5gg).

Sea breeze or not, Carver still sweats under his armor. His sleeves have bunched at his armpits something fierce, which means every time he moves it feels like he's being rubbed with burlap, and something's gone wrong with the collar of his chestpiece, so there's a bloody blister forming at the nape of his neck.

Just another glorious day as a templar. He swallows down the old bitter sense of ill-use, and tries to ignore the voice crying _why does this always happen to me_ in the back of his head. Sure, he's miserable — hot and sticky and ready to yell from sheer frustration, and there are still four hours to go before he can sit down to lunch — but this is the misery he _chose_ , and that makes whining about it pointless.

Better to stand in the sun and hate every minute because you chose to do so, rather than stand in your magnificent sister's shadow and feel your soul curdling a little more every day, right?

The breeze tousles the hair falling over his forehead, cools the sweat stinging in his eyes. Carver tilts his head back and sighs as a little of his discomfort fades. The knight-captain always says it's a templar's duty to bear up under any little sufferings, and that he'll get used to them in time, but Carver can't see himself getting used to the chafes and aches any more than he can get used to smelling salt on the wind instead of good clean earth.

Still, he hasn't complained out loud, which is more than he can say for Franklin or Rosemary, who only stop their whining when it's time to eat, or to make some jab about Fereldan manure in the Gallows.

At first his fists itched to knock out a few of their teeth, and show them what happened when people sniped about farmers and dog lords. Like their parents had been any better than stablehands and barmaids; at least his family had owned the land they worked. But people expected him to brawl, he saw it in their eyes and in the glances they tossed back and forth, and so he gritted his teeth till he feared they'd crack, and never said a word, much less threw a blow.

Let them think he was too stupid to make sense of it all. He knew his worth. What did the rest matter?

That sounded dangerously like something Bethany would say. Maker, he nearly hears her voice in his head, almost sees her smile and her shrug as she spoke. He pushes her away — gently — and turns back toward the entrance he's supposedly guarding.

 _Supposedly_ , because there's no one about but Sol, puttering about his stall, and a few Tranquil moving like sleepwalkers across the stones. Carver tries not to look away — they give him the shudders, poor bastards, but if the wrong person's watching, and sees him shirking, then there'll be hell to pay later. Most of the other templars had mastered the trick of not seeing the Tranquil, even when they were face-to-face, but he still has a long way to go.

The breeze dies away, and takes the rest of the clouds with it. Now there's nothing but the sun, slowly cooking him alive inside his armor. Carver focuses on keeping his shoulders straight and his eyes ahead, watching the faraway glitter of the sea, and tries to imagine what the farm would look like now.

 _Probably still just a pile of ash_ , he thinks, the bitter taste building up in his throat like dust once more. _Look ahead, not back._

***

On his way to the canteen for lunch, Carver passes a group of young mages as their teacher herds them down the corridor. She hushes them as they whisper, her eyes darting toward Carver in between every word, but children will be children, and most of them ignore her.

One of them, a dark-eyed boy with a plump face that just screams _You'll never guess what I just did_ , peers up at Carver and gives him a cheeky, gap-toothed smile. "Hullo, Ser Carver," he says. "Off to lunch? It's just beef stew today. Euccch."

 _Little shit_ , Carver thinks, almost fondly. Before he can muster a stern look in reply, the teacher swoops in and pushes the boy away.

"That's quite enough, Dash," she says. "We must be quiet as Chantry mice in the halls, you know that." She glances up at Carver, her thin-cheeked face tight with worry. "Apologies, Ser Carver."

He nods. Any word out of his mouth would have her jumping out of her skin, and while some templars like to watch her going pale and twitchy, Carver's never seen the fun in fighting someone who can't offer a challenge. "Mind your teacher," he tells Dash instead, when the boy peeps around his teacher's hip.

Dash wrinkles his nose at Carver, and then the little herd passes away, the teacher still murmuring "Chantry mice, Chantry mice" while her students whisper to each other. A few of them glance back at Carver, each face wearing a varying degree of nervousness, so Carver keeps his own expression neutral until they're out of sight.

Hafren, he remembers. That's the teacher's name. An old, good name, the kind that showed up in the stories his mother liked to read. A name like his sister's — probably Mother got _Rhyssa_ out of one of those stories, and that's why she grew up to be such a heroine. A pity Hafren's name hadn't given her the same luck.

 _My sister probably got her share along with mine_ , he thinks, his envy so well-worn it no longer stings, and heads for the canteen. The smell of beef stew greets him long before he arrives, and he smiles at his bowl as he starts to eat.

***

Rainy summer days mean Carver doesn't risk broiling inside his armor, and the relative comfort means he lets his mind wander back to Ferelden, and to the days he spent picking berries out in the woods with his sisters. A cool green canopy overhead, damp earth under his feet, the taste of blackberries on his tongue. Good days, all of them, even when Rhyssa stuffed mud down his shirt and Bethany ate half the berries in his bucket. Maker, how they laughed, till they startled the birds out of the trees, not noticing how far they'd walked till the blisters on their feet cried out. Then Bethany would heal them away, her fingers knitting laces of soft blue light out of thin air, and Rhyssa would chill their waterskins to give them something cool to drink on the way home.

Before he grew up and knew better, magic had meant fruit ices on even the hottest days, and meat that never spoiled. None of their animals had ever come up lame, and all their sheepdogs lived to be almost twenty. No one had to suffer colds or fevers for weeks on end, and they never lacked a fire. How stupid he'd been, to think it was all that simple and good and pure.

Maybe it was, for some mages. Maybe some of them never thought about how easy it would be to spill a little blood and rise up, blazing, or made puppets out of good men. Somewhere in the world, there might be more mages like Bethany, who kept the town's wells clean and sweet and healed the miller's horse on the sly, even though the bastard always gave them short measure.

If such mages do exist, Carver won't meet them here. Almost all the mages he's met in Kirkwall fit neatly into one of two categories: the mad dogs who need to be put down, and the cowed and silent who drift through the Gallows like jellyfish. He's not fooled, the latter can become the former in the blink of an eye, but he can't help pitying them. They're so lifeless, more like paper dolls than people, and it takes all he has sometimes not to shout at them, to tell them to grow a spine and be thankful they're not dead or Tranquil.

Some templars do. Maybe the day's coming when he will, but when he sees Hafren, scurrying through the halls without meeting anyone's eyes, or Dash cradling a hand covered in welts, his pity wells up and fills his throat, and he nearly chokes. He can never help remembering his sisters, bent over a jaybird with a broken wing, their eyes lit from within by an unfamiliar light.

*** 

"You're not wearing your helmet," says Ser Cullen, as Carver enters the barracks.

"No, knight-captain," Carver replies. He likes Cullen, and what's more he respects the man, but he's never let that get in the way of a healthy dose of wariness. Rhyssa liked to have her fun at Cullen's expense, but anyone who survived the mess at Kinloch Hold should not be trifled with.

 _Try telling Rhyssa that_ , Carver thinks, before he realizes Cullen's spoken again. "I'm sorry, knight-captain, I didn't catch that."

Cullen raises one eyebrow that clearly says he knows Carver was woolgathering. "I asked you why, Ser Carver. Most of the other knight-lieutenants make a point of it."

There are many answers to that question, but Carver chooses the most obvious, even though it makes him sound as witless as Franklin. "I find it's hot, knight-captain."

"Overheating is far less dangerous than being unprepared," Cullen replies. "Even in the Gallows, one must anticipate the worst."

No doubt Cullen spends his life anticipating the worst, but Carver doesn't say so. "Yes, knight-captain."

Cullen begins to move past, then pauses. "Is there no other reason, Ser Carver?"

He shakes his head, because how could he begin to explain to the bloody _knight-captain_ , Meredith's own right hand, that something in him twists and burns when he sees how the mages act when they can't see his face? There are templars who get a thrill out of being the faceless voice of authority, but Father always taught Carver that you owned your actions, good or bad. And while Carver's track record is far from perfect on that score, he will own his life and his future. When he gives an order, _he_ gives it, not a steel mask.

"None, knight-captain," he replies, with perfect calm.

Cullen gives him a long, appraising look — Carver wouldn't be surprised if Cullen had seen through the lie the instant it was out of his mouth — but Cullen merely nods once more, and walks off, back straight as a sword.

*** 

The truth is, Carver sees Bethany in every mage that crosses his path. The healers are obvious — Bethany never met a hurt she didn't fight to fix, even if the battle was already lost — but he sees her reflected in the children, too, in their still-bright gazes and too-short laughter. He hears her when the mages pray, her voice rising above all the others to echo in his ears.

In the days before Ostagar, Carver met one of Loghain's veterans, an old wreck of a woman with a missing eye and one arm gone below the elbow. Aurelie was her name, a ridiculous bit of fluff that didn't fit with her close-cropped grey hair and thin-lipped mouth, but she had a voice like a bird's, and she told him over the fire that while her missing eye didn't bother her, she still mourned her arm.

"I wake up some mornings," she said, "an' I feel it, though I look down an' see there's naught but space where my hand an' fingers was. An' it hurts, too, like I just bloody lost it again."

Some days, Carver wakes in the morning and forgets, for a breath, that an ogre smashed Bethany to bloody bits. Some days, the final rattling breath leaving her body isn't the last thing he hears when he goes to sleep. Some days, he can look in the mirror and not want to scream at the lines at his mouth and eyes, because how will Bethany know him when they see each other again, and he's an old man and she's still young, a fixed point in time getting ever-farther away?

Mother, Rhyssa, they never could understand. And no one here would dare to say anything other than _our condolences_ if he told them he had once had a twin, and would probably say something far worse if they learned she was a mage.

It's so unfair, he thinks. Bethany was good and kind and never stopped laughing, but she's the one who died, snuffed out without a thought by a slavering beast, and he and Rhyssa somehow keep surviving. He should have been the one to take that blow — it would have killed him just as surely, but then this great gaping hole in the world wouldn't exist and Bethany could have kept on healing the sick and cleansing wells and laughing, instead of being a shadow always hovering at the edge of his sight, or a light half-cast on every mage he sees.

 _Why not me?_ he cries to the Maker. _Why not Mother, or Rhyssa? Why Bethany? Tell me, damn you._

There's never an answer, but he never stops asking.

***

Kirkwall is burning. Again. Carver's so bloody tired of the smell of smoke, and even more tired of the taste of lyrium, but he's not finished yet. Still one more battle left to fight, so many ways left to die.

He uncorks his last bottle of lyrium — he hates taking it this way, but not more than any of the others, and it's not like he'll have time to worry about the way it coats his tongue on the way down — and then sees Hafren crouching nearby, wrapping a long dirty strip of linen around her hand. She looks ready to drop, the way mages do when they're scrapping the bottom of the barrel, but she winds the bandage with grim, steady determination.

 _Where are all her little ones?_ Carver wonders, though he knows it's better not to. Better not to think at all about all the faces he should be seeing, mage and templar alike.

The bottle in his hand feels so heavy. He holds it without drinking, while Hafren finishes her bandage and slowly stands up, as if all her bones are grinding to powder. She wipes her face, leaving soot and blood behind in smudges, and then catches him looking her way. No flinch this time, but they're all far beyond that. Meredith is mad, Orsino is mad and dead, and Carver's sister and her group of misfits are all that stand between the city and the fires.

Not all. Carver crosses the little square slowly, and holds the bottle out to Hafren. "Here," he says. "Looks like you need this more than I do."

She takes it uncertainly, eyes narrowed, but she drains the bottle when he gives her a nod. Right away, she looks like a new woman, and she almost smiles.

"Thank you, Ser Carver," she says. "But what of you?"

"I can last for a while yet." It's true; he's bone-weary, but something has lightened in his heart, where before there was only lead. He can see this through.

Hafren opens her mouth, but Carver stops her with a hand on her shoulder. "Find who you can," he says, with all the authority he possesses. "Get them to safety. The Gallows aren't safe — try Darktown. Bring water if you can."

She ducks her head, an obedient Circle mage to the last, and slips away without a backwards glance. Carver takes a moment to shake his head over this turn — setting mages free, he'll be executed for this if anyone is left standing who cares — and then turns toward the little group clustered in a tight knot at the head of the alley.

"Sister!" he cries. A familiar pair of blue eyes meets his own. Not the ones he's spent nearly a decade wishing he could see, but welcome in spite of everything. They're all they've got, now and forever. "You're not planning to save the city all by yourself, are you?"

Rhyssa blinks at him, then breaks into a wide, hungry smile. Fenris and Varric exchange a look, but Carver doesn't spare them a glance. The city burns, and he'll probably be dead within the hour, but there's a laugh in his mouth, just begging to be set free.

He was too slow on the mountain. He won't make that mistake here. And maybe, when the smoke clears and this horrible, bloody city is safe, he'll smell home upon the wind.

"Come on, Carver," calls Rhyssa. "One last job for the Hawkes, what do you say?"

Whatever happens next, he thinks, Bethany will know him by his laughter. "I say lead on," he calls back, smiling, heading toward his sister and the fires beyond her.


End file.
